Standing Room Only Podcast Options

12:43 PM.This has been a strong year for New Zealand's screen sector - despite the global pandemic. 2020 opened with an Oscar for Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit, and a major international TV series - the… Read more Audio, Gallery

12:29 PM.Encouraging musicians who play traditional Maori instruments (taonga puoro) to be braver, more experimental - that's the goal of Horomona Horo. Horomona has just been appointed as both a researcher… Read more Audio

12:17 PM.Two years after Invercargill's two main cultural institutions were forced to close due to seismic concerns, a transitional Art and Museum space is about to open its doors. Read more Audio, Gallery

5:32 PM.It's one thing for a film festival to go online - we looked at this on the show last week - but what about a full-on theatre festival? The annual Koanga Festival showcases new Maori plays and… Read more Audio, Gallery

2:50 PM.Her name is Gemma New, and she's been hailed as "one of the brightest rising stars in the conducting firmament". More important - to us at any rate - is that the in-demand conductor was born and bred… Read more Audio

2:40 PM.Poet Rhian Gallagher's latest collection Far Flung takes us from South Island bush to Dunedin's notorious Seacliff Mental Hospital. She also reflects on the many challenges facing Irish migrants who… Read more Audio

2:32 PM.A new novel about a flat, a rat, and a nationwide movement against the landlord-tenant model has come from the pen of Murdoch Stephens. Under the pseudonym Richard Meros, he wrote the popular… Read more Audio

1:49 PM.H Guthrie Smith's 1921 book Tutira: The Story of an NZ Sheep Station is credited with being New Zealand's first significant environmentalist publication. It was also the inspiration for stage director… Read more Audio, Gallery

1:33 PM.Actor and acting coach Peter Feeney's put some useful tricks of his trade into a new book, from handling auditions and rejection, to producing emotion on demand - even tips on learning lines! Acting… Read more Audio

12:47 PM.The latest TVNZ/BBC co-production with to hit the screens here and in the UK is a series based on New Zealand author Stacy Gregg's much loved Pony Club Secrets book, that have sold more than a million… Read more Audio, Gallery

12:14 PM.After the Second World War, New Zealanders understandably struggled to see a brighter future after all the devastation. So in 1952, Auckland hosted an exhibition with two purposes. First, it offered… Read more Audio, Gallery

2:49 PM.The most recent OECD Programme for International Students assessment showed a marked decline in reading for pleasure. Alarmingly it discovered that half of New Zealand's 15-year-olds have never read… Read more Audio

2:40 PM.A family disappears without a trace after a road-trip along the West Coast highway. More than 30 years later, the body of one of the children is discovered. But he's several years older than when he… Read more Audio

2:25 PM.When three Australasian photographers decided to create a Zine of Covid-19 related images during the initial outbreak, they could never have guessed it would come out just as New Zealand and Australia… Read more Audio, Gallery

1:45 PM.The secret weapon in the upcoming comedy heist movie Lowdown dirty criminals is undoubtedly the woman who left New Zealand a raw Kiwi kid and became one of the most successful and most loved actors in… Read more Audio, Gallery

12:47 PM.One of the casualties of the last lockdown was the International Film Festival - or at least the festival as we know it. Like other festivals around the world, ours went "virtual" - meaning going… Read more Audio

12:36 PM.In a new documentary, we meet a young Muslim man who became a spokesperson for his people after the Christchurch Mosque Attack. In One year on, he talks candidly about his reluctance to step back into… Read more Audio, Gallery

4:49 PM.The chair of the new board is retired High Court Judge Kit Toogood. He spoke to Lynn about why he thinks the gallery is so important and how it may have to change to attract new audiences and sustain… Read more Audio

2:40 PM.Pip McKay's novel, The Telling Time is set both in New Zealand in the 1980s and in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1950s. Pip McKay did such a great job in the opening pages of her latest novel that… Read more Audio

2:25 PM.Film maker and comic artist Jonathan King talked to Lynn Freeman about his latest graphic novel for young adults: The Inkberg Enigma. Read more Audio

1:50 PM.Canterbury Sculptor Llew Summers created more than 900 works over his five decades. Lynn Freeman talked to cultural historian and writer John Newton, who has written Llew's story: Llew Summers: Body… Read more Audio, Gallery

1:33 PM.A play translated from English into Hindi for New Zealand audiences is about to open in Auckland. Lynn talked to Kapil Asrani, Monica Nangia and Ruzbeh Palsetia from Indian Art Theatre. Love Letters… Read more Audio

12:45 PM.Melissa Wastney from Read NZ joined us to explain what the Online Platform, Hooked on Books can do for young New Zealand readers and reviewers. Read more Audio

12:30 PM.General Director Thomas De Mallet Burges talks about how NZ Opera dealt with the effect of Covid 19. The company has kept busy and are now preparations are well underway for a multi media sit specific… Read more Audio

2:50 PM.A catapult that fires projectiles made out of oil, lard, wax and a pigment made from burnt bones is part of an exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Candice Lin, that's about to open in New Plymouth… Read more Audio, Gallery